Ask any blogger what their two main wishes are for their blogs, and eight times out of ten* you’ll probably get “more comments” and “more subscribers” as the answer.

*Note – eight times out of ten is not a scientific discovery, although it may be. So….

Especially for bloggers who thrive on engagement, more comments means more goals met. More comments also have a way of increasing subscribers, because if a reader leaves a comment, it means they’ve enjoyed the piece. If they’ve enjoyed the piece, it stands to reason that they’d want to subscribe to get more of the same content.

So, yeah… comments and subscribers.

The problem is, in recent years, many bloggers have complained (some rightly, some not so much) that blog comments have started to dwindle, as more readers took their discussions to other platforms, more often than not Facebook and Google+.

To counter that, third party comment plugins like Livefyre and Disqus offered workarounds – Livefyre’s SocialSync feature pulled in tweets and Facebook comments, while Disqus allowed you to tag Twitter users.

Then there was Comments Evolved, that allowed you to display comments from Livefyre, Disqus, Facebook, Google+, alongside your native WordPress comments. Unfortunately, while that plugin was useful, it stopped being supported.

However, much like many third party plugins (especially ones that have social network support built in), performance of a blog could be impacted, as Twitter and Facebook API calls slowed down response times.

Add to that the recent announcement by both Livefyre and Disqus that sponsored comments and ads would be appearing alongside “normal comments”, and the negativity these announcements received, the need for a solid native WordPress comment solution continued.

Postmatic? What’s That, Then?

While many other plugins offer a “unique” spin on how they approach blog comments, Postmatic actually delivers on that promise.

Instead of having to comment via the web (although that’s still possible – more on that later), Postmatic allows you to get a new post by email, read it, and then comment on that post just by hitting reply to the email you’ve just read. If you want to try it for yourself, simply leave a comment below this post and see what happens when other comments come in!

It’s so simple, you wonder why no-one has really thought of this sooner (there was a stripped down version of this for Disqus, but it was only for admins).

As well as being simple, it makes perfect sense.

Think about it – where do you spend most of your time during the day? A good bet would say email (perhaps second only to Clash of Clans) – so if you’re spending so much time in email why wouldn’t you manage all your blog post interactions that way too?

In Postmatic’s own words,

We raise engagement by reaching your audience where they are – in their inbox. Except now with Postmatic, they can comment back and keep the conversation going just by hitting reply.

As a user of Postmatic since February this year, I can 100% agree that engagement levels have increased, as shown by the chart below.

As you can see, in the seven months prior to installing Postmatic, my comment count per month averaged 149 comments per month. In the seven months since implementing Postmatic, that jumps to 312.

That’s more than doubled my average comment count!

My posting schedule over these 14 months has remained pretty consistent (with the exception of one post per month more in May, June and July this year), as did my social shares – so how come Postmatic grew my comments and engagement when other plugins didn’t?

Simple – people felt comfortable commenting on my blog, because there were no extra hoops like social log ins, account creations, passwords, etc., to jump through.

Additionally, because Postmatic enables commenting by email, people could truly post a comment or reply whenever they wanted – at their desk, at the supermarket, at work, even while lazing at the beach having a cold drink (as I did, numerous times, over the summer).

However, as much as Postmatic raises engagement, there’s so much more to them than that.

Grow, Deliver, Engage, Value

Postmatic’s goal is simple – to reward bloggers for the love, sweat, time and money they put into their content.

To that end, they’ve created a four pronged approach so bloggers can focus on the specific area(s) they want to improve. While each area can work individually, it’s when you combine them that the magic truly happens.

1. Grow

It’s not just engagement that Postmatic grows. Pretty much every blogger also wants to grow their subscriber numbers, whether that’s via RSS subscribers or – more usually – email subscribers, and Postmatic delivers here too.

While not as feature-intense as similar plugins, Postmatic Optins offers four “flavours” of optin forms: Popup over the page, Slider, Top Bar, and After Content.

Between them, these four options cover the most popular optin forms for email lists (with the exception of Exit Intent, which is scheduled for a future update).

As you can see, they don’t look too shabby either.

Postmatic’s After Content and Slider optins

Postmatic’s header optin and after content optin

Each optin has five basic colour options, to help blend into your theme design better (you can also edit them via CSS). Additionally, the copy is fully customizable and supports HTML, so you can create very customized forms specific to your email list goals.

Not only that, but for the pop up and slider optins, you can choose when these display – after a set amount of time, after the reader scrolls to the end of a post, or after they leave a comment.

While there are only four optins at the moment, they more than cover the needs for the majority of bloggers looking to grow email subscription numbers.

In addition to the Optins, Postmatic also has a pretty cool Import and Invite set-up. The import option allows you to import subscribers from MailChimp, Mailpoet, Jetpack, and Subscribe to Comments Reloaded.

With the invite option, you can invite past commenters, commenters who are subscribed to replies but not posts, email lists and more (Postmatic do a great job of ensuring bloggers don’t abuse this option with clear wording around best practices).

2. Deliver

Not only does Postmatic help you grow your subscribers, it also delivers your posts directly to them.

Much like Feedblitz, Feedburner, and Mailpoet’s email delivery service, Postmatic sends out each new post by email to your subscribers. The free version of Postmatic sends the post via the mail service of your web host, while Postmatic Premium uses Mandrill and/or Mailgun, depending on network traffic.

While the free version of Postmatic is more than adequate for email delivery of your posts, it’s when you make the jump to premium that the service really shines.

As well as guaranteeing delivery of your email, the extra features and options available to premium users makes the current $9 per month per site a steal.

The ability to customize the header and footer of your email, using either images or widgets (Postmatic adds email widgets to your standard WordPress widgets).

The option to differentiate widgets depending on whether the email is a new post delivery, or a comment reply email.

Support for other third-party plugins, like Social Warfare sharing, and Skimlinks affiliate links (more on that later).

The ability to spam, trash or approve a moderated comment, all from your email.

However, in addition to the features above, and the comparisons in the image above, the key difference between the free and premium version of Postmatic is how the posts are delivered.

If you’re used to receiving posts from Jetpack or Subscribe2, you’ll know the basic look and feel of these emails. Nothing particularly wrong with them – just that they lack the bells and whistles of other email services (branding, images, etc). This is the same for the free version of Postmatic.

Postmatic Premium, on the other hand, converts your post, with all its formatting, to email-compatible HTML and wraps it in the customized template you’ve created with your own images and widget areas.

The result is a beautiful, uncluttered, content-focused email template – with the added bonus that your subscribers can leave a comment (and reply to future ones) all from the comfort of that very same email!

3. Engage

As I mentioned earlier in the post, one of Postmatic’s main goals is to grow the engagement around a blog post. As highlighted by the chart showing my own blog’s engagement growth, this is a goal Postmatic are more than delivering on.

Other bloggers that have switched to Postmatic have also shared how it’s helped their own blogs when it comes to comments and engagement.

However, the mindset to comment via email can still be a big one to overcome – after all, we’ve commented via the web for so long, it’s become the only way we know.

Pronounced “epic”, Epoch can best be described as a comment plugin that offers the best features of Disqus – real-time commenting, Ajax loading – while solving some major long-time complaints about native WordPress comments, like page cache support and CDN support, all while remaining SEO-friendly.

Because of the light design of the plugin, it doesn’t eat up resources the same way a Disqus would. Nor should you have any loading issues when trying to post a comment – anyone who’s ever seen the little spinning circle of Disqus loading doom will appreciate Epoch’s approach here, especially on mobile.

Since Epoch supports Ajax commenting, every comment left on a post via the web will appear immediately, with no reloading of the page.

While Epoch is a standalone plugin and can be used on any self-hosted WordPress blog, combining it with Postmatic sees some pretty cool stuff happening.

No matter if you’re commenting on the web, or from your email, every comment is updated in real-time. So, a web user could be leaving a comment, and a new one from an email subscriber could appear on the post – all without disrupting the web commenter.

Oh, and remember the Postmatic Optin option of the Slider or Popup only appearing after a comment has been left? If the blogger has Epoch activated, it will fill out the name and email part of the form, and the reader only has to click the subscribe button – how’s that for frictionless subscriber growth?

Epoch has three style settings when it comes to the look and feel of the comments on your site.

To help you choose which one is best for you, the plugin’s settings asks how much you’d like Epoch to take over that look and feel – “Completely”, “Use my typography and colours”, and “Minimally”.

Completely is Epoch’s own styling, and is the one that most resembles your typical third-party comments style like Disqus.

Use my own typography and colours is the best of both worlds, inasmuch that your own font and link colours will be used, while the style of the copy will closely resemble your existing comments.

Minimally simply gives you all the features of Epoch, while using your existing comment style. However, there may be some glitches based on your theme’s code, so this option may or may not work for you.

Using a blog’s existing typography and colour options

My own preference is for using my own typography, as per the image above, but I also use the Completely option on other sites, and it’s an excellent alternative for anyone that prefers the Disqus approach to styling.

Epoch’s Completely style

Epoch recently came out of beta, but already it’s shaping up to be an excellent commenting option, and one that promises to make blog comments more fun and less complicated again – which is no bad thing at all.

4. Value

The last part of Postmatic’s four tiered approach to helping bloggers meet their goals is the question of value.

When you think of the word value, and its use around a blog, what do you think of?

Monetizing a blog?

The value a blogger brings to his or her readers, commenters and subscribers?

The value of a blogger to brands?

Sponsorship opportunities?

All of these, and more, are actually the definition of value when it comes to a blog. Think about it – you read/subscribe to a blog because of the value in the content, and the expertise that blogger brings.

You’re also happy to support that blogger through affiliate links, because of the value the blogger brings in recommending only products that would be valuable to you.

As a blogger, you might feel that the readership and engaged community you have built trust with is an ideal one to help you become a trusted partner for brands looking to do right by their customers.

All of these goals can be met by Postmatic.

A blogger grows their list, helping to add to their value to a brand or affiliates/sponsors.

A commenter grows their circle of connections, and feels their thoughts are valued more.

A blogger thinking of a community membership site can use Postmatic to deliver exclusive, behind-the-paywall conversations and value all from email.

Because of the approach to privacy Postmatic takes, commenters and subscribers can be more confident that they won’t be spammed, nor will their information be used for third parties and retargeting, making the relationship between blogger and subscriber more valuable.

If you think Skimlinks is a good fit for your content you sign up on their site.

Install a javascript snippet on your blog (or use their WordPress plugin) and you’re done.

The next time you write about a product or service that has any sort of affiliate program, Skimlinks will intercept any clicks on links in your post, track the sales, and share the commission with you.

Skimlinks work from within Postmatic emails so tracking affiliate sales happens both on the web and in the inbox.

Now when you send an email out, the Skimlinks aren’t just restricted to your website. Couple this with some other vendors Postmatic are hoping to announce soon, and you should be starting to see why Postmatic is a developer to sit up and take notice of.

Their support is second-to-none (seriously), and their willingness to listen to their users (and the readers of their users), to add new features and support for other plugins, is something all WordPress developers should take notes from.

Are they perfect? Not quite (but they’re close).

You won’t currently get analytics around your emails, but then Postmatic isn’t (currently) meant to replace a Mailchimp or AWeber. Instead, it’s about raising engagement, all while delivering beautiful emails that allow comments to start the moment a post is received.

The Optins don’t have analytics like Bloom does – but then, Bloom is premium and their analytics are fairly basic. Besides, it’s easy enough to use Google Analytics to set up tracking subscription statistics.

There’s also no weekly digest of emails – yet. However, if that’s something that you prefer over instant delivery of posts, look out for digests in the next major update of the plugin.

Postmatic keeps the features focused and the experience tight, with a major focus on getting people talking about your content, which means they don’t charge hundreds of dollars for the service like others do.

While the free version is fine, ask yourself this – if you could meet your goals as a blogger when it comes to subscribers, comments, brand partnerships, affiliate sales, membership site opportunities and more, would you be willing to spend just $9 per month for that?

No worries, always happy to promote excellent products and services, of which Postmatic covers both and then some. Besides, it’s me who should be thanking you – your product has made blogging fun again, and takes me back to when blogs were really all about the content and the experience for readers.

Hi Danny,
Good to see you here at WP Kube singing the praises of Postmatic.
I’m just waiting on Jason to see how the conversation with Thrive went before considering a change to their platform. I was surprised to see just how much of an increase an established blogger like yourself got.

The conversation is going well! We’ve been working with them and ruled out an integration with Landing Pages for now… but are going to be able to integrate Thrive Content Builder. That means you’ll be able to make seriously nice layouts in your posts and have them hold up via email. It’s going to be fantastic.

They are looking on their end at doing a Postmatic integration with Thrive Leads. I’m not sure where they are at with it but I think it is in the works.

One of the reasons I’ve steered away from Divi by Elegant Themes is their page builder now supports post types (in the latest update). The problem being, when I’ve tried to send these new post formats through email, they haven’t always come across well (primarily because of the shortcodes they use).

So, if the Thrive one can be supported, that’d be a big plus in using Thrive for that project I was mentioning to David.

Yea. It’s going to be pretty cool. And the functionality we’ll be opening up isn’t limited to just Thrive Content Builder – it will be available to any plugin developer that wants to be sure their plugin- generated css holds up in email. It should open a lot of doors… and will mean a lot less custom integration work on my end. I’m going to try to convince Dylan to get it out in our next release!

Cheers, mate, and given I thought Livefyre was the “ultimate” in conversation growth (more to do with their inclusion of tweets, in fairness), I was pleasantly surprised to see the even bigger difference Postmatic made.

I guess you can teach old dogs (me) new tricks after all. 🙂

Looking forward to seeing if Thrive can integrate, heard good things about it and eager to use on an upcoming project.

Cheers for that mate, appreciated! I’m always wary of turning any post I write about Postmatic into a love-fest, that’s how much I love what they’re trying to do for bloggers. Looking forward to seeing where they go next, their updates usually add some other great feature we didn’t know we needed until we used it.

Hey you want to see what the next version of Epoch looks like? We’re focusing on front-end moderation. I’m going to have to toot my own horn on this one: http://twitter.com/gopostmatic/status/644734294011834368

That’s the next one. Probably on Monday or Tuesday. Since that video was made we also figured out how to automatically approve a comment by just replying to it (just like you can in Postmatic via email).

This seems interesting however I’m not sure that I want my comments and subscriptions solutions to be bundled together. I already have existing solutions that do great things for generating optins, as well as a thriving list. Wondering if this can be used alongside without creating separate lists and breaking up the audience. Guess I’ll have to test it out!

You can definitely keep them separate. On my own blog, for example, I used to run MailPoet for my subs, and let Postmatic handle the comments.
However, once they started offering support for plugins like Social Warfare inside their email template, it made sense for me to make the full switch to Postmatic (as I simply use email for delivery of content as opposed to anything else).

I use my email lists for more than just delivering blog content however so it may not make sense, also I can’t imagine every person would want every blog post in their inbox. Also from just a day of testing out on this post it seems like if it is a successful post people will get a lot of emails, which I would personally find annoying in my primary inbox.

The jury is still out on this one for me. In other news this is my first test of responding to a comment via email, and one that may not have happened with the traditional comment setup so there you have it.

If you (as in generic “you”) don’t use email subscriptions for newsletters, then every post already ends up in a subscriber’s inbox. It’s simply an alternative to RSS, and one that more people are preferring, if trends of the last 18 months or so continue.

With regards the amount of emails, Postmatic handles this pretty well on two fronts. The first part is, you only get notifications of comments if you leave one yourself – otherwise, all you’ll ever see is the post. No new comments, no replies, etc.

The second way they handle a lot of comments is by “throttling” the notifications when a post is taking off. By default, if a post gets 6 comments in the space of an hour, Postmatic will send you an email advising you the comment notifications have been paused for now. It’s then up to you, the subscriber, to decide if you want to continue with the notifications or not.

If you do, you simply reply with the word “rejoin”, and you get sent a recap of any comments made during your absence, as well as continue to receive new replies, etc.

It’s a very elegant way of ensuring the “power” is completely in the hands of the commenter, and ensures a much more enjoyable interaction because of it.

I’m sure I missed it, or am just not thinking it through, but… One of the main goals is to sell services & products. Therefore, you always want to bring people back to your site, which is why we’re taught, and teach, to do a Read More (or continue reading) in email/send excerpts to bring people back to our sites. So, if we send them the whole post, how does that get them back to our sites? Also, Jetpack sends post (excerpts) already, so why would we need Postmatic to send our posts? I get the reply by email bit, but otherwise, I’m not getting it. Please illuminate this for me.

Postmatic also offers the option to send out just excerpts only, so subscribers will still click through to your site. You can also use their widgets to include CTAs on full emails (these can be placed at the bottom of the email) – so offers, sales, etc, can be highlighted there.

In their next major release, Postmatic will be supporting Digests, which is closer to the newsletter feel you mention – and I believe they’ll also have the option to continue commenting directly from email (but don’t quote me on that!).

It depends. Some people are in it for building a community, a fan base, a loyal following. For them, higher engagement will lead to higher traffic in the long haul. Sending full posts is a good fit for those kinds of bloggers or businesses. They also usually enjoy and SEO bump from the increases in commenting… which drives new traffic to their communities and feeds back into the system. And, as Danny said, you can always sell products and services right from within the email… which is delivered to your subscribers where they actually are.

So sending the entire post won’t get your users back to your site in the short term. But it will do a lot to get a conversation started and you’ll probably see the benefits of that later.

As to why not just use Jetpack for delivery? You can. There are a ton of plugins that will deliver your posts. None of them will make your posts look nearly as fantastic as Postmatic. We jump through a lot of hoops to make sure things look awesome on desktop and mobile both.

I’ve been with Postmatic (premium) for a little more than 3 months and whilst I know it can’t be completely ascribed to them, I *know* Postmatic has helped increase my email subscribers count (blogging gold!) significantly! By 70%! I’ve ran two giveaways in that time which required subscription to the blog as one of the entry options and a power blogger recently shared a post of mine so my subscribers peaked around those times but I’m convinced without the Optins and email commenting, my sub seconds list would have been as static as it was pre-Postmatic. Reading your post I’m kicking myself for not using Epoch so that’s on my to do list for today! Great post and I agree with it wholeheartedly 🙂

Great to hear, and completely agree (obviously, hehe) – the ease of subscription that the optins offers makes it almost like a no-brainer to subscribe. Especially when Epoch does all the heavy lifting of the name and email for you. 🙂

Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you are having so much success with our optins package. It is simple but seems to do the job nicely. Epoch looks great with your theme. I just checked it out. Keep up to date with our blog for other goodies and announcements. There is a lot coming down the pipe this fall.

Cheers, and glad you enjoyed the overview! To your question, Epoch is a standalone plugin that offers the best native WordPress comment experience, with third-party type features.

Its main “exclusive” benefit with Postmatic is the integration with the Optins feature (pre-filled subscription boxes when leaving a comment via the web). However, it can also offer a more traditional commenting option for blogs where the readers may not yet be fully ready for comments-bymail that Postmatic offers, all while complementing the Postmatic benefits.

Plus, the video link that Jason left in reply to another comment shows the slick features Epoch is getting in the next update (front-end moderation and management of comments). Pretty cool for a free plugin. 🙂

Thanks for the reply, Danny. Looks like a great combo for a commenting system. I didn’t realize Epoch is free.

I’ve signed up for a free trial for the Postmatic Premium to play with that.

I’ve been thinking of going with Disqus for awhile now, but it’s going to a sponsored ads mode that is NOT cool. 🙂

PS – free this, and free that… I’ve always paid for premium features with of plugins that deliver the goods. If Postmatic (and Epoch for that matter) are really that good at what they do, I have no problem supporting them with paid subs.

No worries, mate, and yes, the approach Disqus is taking to how they monetize is kinda sneaky. Like you, I’d much rather support the developer directly and pay the premium – and the extra features on hand for the $9 per month really is a steal.

Hi, Will definitely give a try for postmatic. I also got an interesting update from them that adding a function for commenters to subscribe to a particular post’s comments and then respond to subsequent comments via email.

Wow Danny, this is one impressively thorough and helpful review. I must admit I have only had time to scan it, but am certainly coming back for more.
I have heard some stuff about Postmatic before, but now after your glowing review I am certainly going to check it out. With your name on it, I know it is worthy!
From what I can see there are so many reasons to love it, engagement, subscribers, integration and I always love finding a tool where the developers know what they are doing and listen to their users!
Thanks for the great find
ashley

What I love about Postmatic (and the complementary plugins/features being developed by the team) is that they can pretty much be used separately, and still benefit the blogger (and reader) in some way. Despite this kind of user experience, they’re continuously looking for even more ways to make things slicker, and blogging/comments to be more fun again.

Postmatic’s Epoch looks really great, and I only became aware of it a few days ago. But I tried to use it with the Max Mag theme I have on my site and the comments just refused to display.

Of course, not all themes are created equal. I get that. Just seemed a cruel twist of fate that I had finally found a commenting system that I liked, only to find that it didn’t play nicely with my existing setup.

Just out of curiosity, what settings did you have Epoch on? I’ve found there to be some issues when you use the “Minimally” option, though as you mention, that can often be more down to how themes treat the wp-comment loop. Switching it to either “”Completely” or “Use my typography” usually works.

Also, the guys at Postmatic are pretty good at coming up with some CSS tricks to try, perhaps Jason can advise on that front? Fingers crossed!

Thanks for a good overview of this new commenting system!
However, there is one deal breaker for me — lack of ability to limit subscription to “replies to me” instead of having to subscribe to all replies to a post. I’m currently using “Subscribe to comments reloaded” addon to implement this feature and would only consider ditching it if said feature were available in Postmatic.

Do you happen to have an idea on whether it’s a feature that’s in the development pipeline or is that not something deemed important and I shouldn’t get my hopes up?
Thanks

Subscriptions to direct-replies aren’t available yet but are on the roadmap for next year. The reason we didn’t tackle them first is that we are primarily focused on conversations. We want to foster dialogue among a group of commenters, about a post. This means keeping everyone in the loop about the ideas and opinions of others… instead of just replies to what you might have said.

I see the convenience and utility of direct replies for sure. It’s something we’ve always wanted to support as it has its place for sites which are more about direct exchanges of information. We found early in our testing, though, that keeping everyone on the same page with the flow of the conversations makes for much better engagement all around.

Pro Tip: The subject lines of the notifications are tailored to let you create email filters and rules within your client. You can pretty easily filter out things which are not direct replies.

Participate in this conversation via emailGet only replies to your comment, the best of the rest, as well as a daily recap of all comments on this post. No more than a few emails daily, which you can reply to/unsubscribe from directly from your inbox.

Full Disclosure This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that if you click on one of the links and purchase an item, we may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). All opinions are our own and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.

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